On We Go

I have just finished editing two of articles for next month’s issue, both of which deal in one way or another with the importance of persistence. Almost every writer I interview mentions persistence somehow, and writing magazine after writing magazine is filled with pages of writing professionals encouraging new writers to persist, persist, persist. Problem is, as a writer you can hear this advice so often that it can cease to mean anything. Yes, yes, I need persistence—but what I really need is an agent!
In truth, you need persistence more. Yet persistence can mean different things to different people. Some people are tough—I call them survivors. For them, persistence is the embodiment of their toughness. Do not bother knocking them down, they will only rise again. Tough people, however, expect to be knocked down, I think. It is a kind of proof they are actually doing something. If you stick your chin out it will get hit, but the alternative to not sticking your chin out is unacceptable, so swing away, Life, I’m a survivor. Tough people get a lot done and can be fantastic allies—just don’t cross them.

I am not tough. In fact, if you’ve read my blogs you may have gleaned a certain antipathy for the very notion of survival. Yet I believe just as strongly in persistence, though it means something slightly different to me. To me, persistence is the rejection of the idea of failure. Persistence is not about taking my lumps, or toughening my skin, it is about viewing life with the greatest compassion possible. Nothing wants to hurt me, and everything is trying to help me. Failure is the belief that something is finished. Nothing is ever finished, it is only on its way to becoming something else.

This may sound airy and theoretical, but for me it is the most grounded and stable place from which to launch any venture, from a novel to a magazine to a relationship. If I live or write or love in fear of something ending or being taken from me, I am always unstable. Nothing can be taken from me that I do not give away, and no one on earth can tell me what I have done or written or thought or sung was worth writing or thinking or singing. It is no one else’s business.